This startup claims they have a definitive way to get you the elusive Xiaomi Mi3
If you are one of those people who have been desperately trying to get your hands on the Xiaomi Mi3, like a million other people who have registered on Flipkart, then BuyHatke has the solution for your frustrations.
In case you were on a digital vacation or living under a rock for the last one month, here’s some context for you. Xiaomi, famously known as the ‘Apple of China’, launched its highly successful Mi3 in India exclusively with Flipkart. The phone was launched for pre-order on July 15. Flipkart was unable to handle the traffic on the day of the first sale, July 22. Servers crashed and the site went down temporarily. The phone was out-of-stock within 40 minutes. The next three sales happened on July 29, August 05 and August 12 with the product going out of stock in 5, 2 and 2.4 seconds respectively.
Xiaomi has been doing quite well for itself and most recently, according to independent research firms, has beaten Samsung in China to become the No. 1 in smartphone category. In India, according to different reports, at least 40,000 phones have been sold in the four sales. The amount of buzz that this has created is insane. The next sale is on August 19th and those who haven’t been able to get their hands on Mi3, now might have a ray of hope.
Related read: Samsung just took a beating by Micromax in India and Xiaomi in China
Buyhatke, started by three IIT-Kharagpur grads, is a dynamic product and price discovery platform. The website dynamically grabs results from various online shopping portals like Flipkart, eBay, Infibeam, Homeshop18, Urbantouch, Jabong, Myntra etc, and provides the best deal to the customer who can then be redirected to the shopping portal offering the best deal to complete the purchase. They also have a Chrome extension called CompareHatke which lets you know the best prices while you browse your favorite e-commerce portal.
And now the team has taken the Xiaomi challenge head-on.
“The main motive when we started out with Buyhatke was to solve major challenges that are online shopping. We first solved disparity in prices across different portals, then we solved problem to price variations and told the user the best time to buy and debunked the myth of deals. Then we solved the frustrating problem of getting discount coupons.
A lot of people were now complaining that they could not get the Xiaomi Mi3. We felt we could solve that challenge for users. And hence we set out doing this,” says Gaurav Dahake, Co-founder/CEO, Buyhatke.
Mentioned below are the steps that Buyhatke recommends on its promotion page to users to ‘ensure’ they can get an Mi3.
1. Ensure that you have registered on Flipkart for the Xiaomi sale beforehand so that you are eligible for the purchase. The registration link can be found here.
2. Install the Comparehatke addon from the link given here.
3. Subscribe to Xiaomi Mi3 alert from their extension options page here. You can also access it by right clicking on the Buyhatke logo in your Chrome bar and clicking on options.
4. Ensure that you have the Chrome browser open and you are logged in into Flipkart with a good internet connection at least 5 minutes before the sale time.
5. The extension should not be in the 'disabled' state at that time. The Chrome extension would open a new tab of Xiaomi Mi3 product page where it would add the product into the cart when the sale starts.
6. Do not close that tab. In case you accidentally close it, you can open it by clicking here.
I asked Gaurav how he is going to ‘ensure’ that the users who use his extension will ‘definitely’ get the product.
“We have automated the system, where right before the sale begins we would start pressing the ‘Buy Now’ button. The extension would do that and it’d do it with great speed and add the product to the cart. We’ve already tested the solution on many different sales and every time the product is added into the cart in less than 0.1 sec,” Gaurav explains.
Given the fact that the fastest Mi3 sale took 2 seconds, if the extension works as Gaurav says it should, this could be the chance for many of you who have set your eyes on the Mi3.
Among other features, the most useful has been the feature where available coupons are automatically added to the cart when users are on the checkout page.
The Buyhatke apps are available on the iOS store.
Buyhatke claims at the end on their promotion page, “If you ensure this we would ensure our best that you get the Xiaomi Mi3.” For the sake of several newly-converted Mi fans, we hope that Buyhatke’s extension works. The results will be out for us to see on August 19th.
Read Buyhatke's detailed story: 3 youngsters from IIT-KGP are taking on the biggies in the online product discovery space